Many of the replies here goes along the lines of: "Time spent gaming is time lost doing sports, helping elders, reading books, socially interacting face to face."

So these kids "hanging out" in the malls; better or worse than joining a raid online? What about the 3 meatbags spread out on the floor in front of the TV watching Nth season of American Idol. Is that so very healthy?

Yes, sports is healthy. Yes, talking face to face is healthy, but using your brains during gaming is also healthy. Nothing is healthy to spend too much time on. Nothing!

Kids today socially interact face-to-face all day at school. If you want to worry, worry about all the elder people that don't understand online communities (games, social websites...) and haven't spoken to anyone for the last 6 days.

I certainly see that kids should learn social online interaction under "controlled forms". My partner has a son of 11 and we teach him how to behave online by playing online games with him.

Some of his friends are among the anoying kids you meet online that begs for gold just because you are older and have more money. Their parents are ignorant to how they behave online. If they started going out in real life begging for money from strangers, you can bet they would care.

We are now currently socially interacting through slashdot. Is this really so bad? Should we just log off and go out and interact in the "real world" just because online is so different?

If you are careless and stupid, how did you remove the EXIF-data? It's difficult enough to find a good EXIF-editor alerady. And if you actually go through all the labour of removing the EXIF-data, you probably would also go through the steps of altering the image. Unless, of course, you are a photo freak and really, really have to use the raw format to capture all the details of your crime.

Here, I must agree.

What do pagers offer that SMS can't? If someone calls while I'm in a store, I just "hang up". Then I call back when I get out. If someone wants to send me a message saying "I'll be late.", SMS is your answer. I carry enough gadgets already without having a designated "call me"-device.